GMF brings together hundreds of policymakers, elected officials, academics, and business leaders from around the world to discuss topics from energy to migration, economics to security, urban growth to diplomacy.

Congress Can Help Prevent Election Hacking

American voters received yet another rude awakening last month. Chicago’s Board of Elections reported that names, addresses, birth dates and other sensitive information about the city’s 1.8 million registered voters had been exposed on an Amazon cloud server for an unknown period. Worse, it appears hackers might have gained access to employees’ personal accounts at Election Systems & Software, a major election technology vendor—info that could be used to hack a future U.S. election.

Earlier, the Department of Homeland Security reported that foreign agents targeted voting systems in 21 states in the 2016 election, and Bloomberg News reported that hackers had successfully compromised various election-technology companies.

In an age of unprecedented cyber risks, these dangers aren’t surprising. But lawmakers and election officials’ lackadaisical response is both staggering and distressing.